


Dear Billy

by flippyspoon



Series: Pour Some Sugar on Me [40]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M, Steve Harrington - Freeform, billy hargrove - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-13 01:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16883100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flippyspoon/pseuds/flippyspoon





	Dear Billy

_Dear Billy,_  


_If you’re reading this, I’m dead._

Steve was not much of a letter writer. He wasn’t much of a writer at all. But once demogorgons made a reappearance in the form of a goddamn army and a few months after he made love to Billy for the first time, Steve decided to write a letter for Billy’s sake. Just in case.

_If I’m dead I’m pretty sure you’re gonna think it was your fault because your dad was always blaming you anytime somebody close to you got hurt. But screw that. Whatever happened, I know it wasn’t your fault. Because you’ve become this man who’s brave and fights for the people he loves. Because you became this guy I fell in love with. And God, I fell soooo hard._

“Max, you get El and you get back to Billy-”

There’s rocks raining down on them. They’re far below Hawkins where the monsters are. Somewhere Billy’s helping lead Hopper’s charge at The Gate. He had to be dragged away from Steve.

_So if I’m dead, I figure I can have a few dying wishes. So my wishes for you are that you go keep trying to be a good man. I know you’re going to be sad. I’m sorry, baby. Don’t let it make you angry, don’t let it make you like your dad. I know you won’t. Take care of Max. Let people care about you. Remember how we loved each other. But don’t be afraid to love again. Promise me._

“What about you!” Max’s eyes are big. The boys are dropping the line of charges along the tunnels. They girls have to get out of here or they aren’t going to win.

“I’m gonna hang back,” Steve says. He’s shaking. This is it. Well, at least he’s going down a hero, he supposes. His left ear is still ringing. He has to hold a hand to his side, he’s bleeding so badly. He’s probably going to die anyway. Maybe. Oh well. “I have to work the detonator manually. The remote doesn’t work. It’s the only way.”

“Steve!”

“Shut up shut up,” Steve mutters. The caverns are dark but there are flames coming up, there’s lava for Christ’s sake. Well, there’s going to be a lot more firepower in a minute. “I want you to give this letter to Billy.” Steve reaches into his inside jacket pocket and pulls out the envelope he’s been carrying around for two months and presses it into her hand. “Just get Billy this letter after…”

“No!” Max shakes her head. “Steve, no! It’s stupid!”

“TAKE EL AND GO!” Steve shoves her hard and she’s crying, grabbing El who’s trying to force as many demogorgons back as she can with the strength of her powers, blood gushing from her nose. But she can’t hold them all back. They need a miracle. Or the explosion. An explosion from a detonator that’s not working remotely. He figured this out ten minutes ago.

He watches her walk away. He holds the detonator in his shaking hands. He has a few minutes. The army of monsters is coming.

_This part is for me. I want you to know what I was thinking about before I died. If there was some shit going down and I knew it was coming, here’s what I was thinking about:_

_The first time I touched you when I knew I wanted you and I wasn’t afraid anymore. I touched your cheek, that was it. And just from that, you looked like I handed you a few million bucks or something. I remember being surprised your skin was so soft under my fingers._

Steve hears caves collapsing and hunches in on himself. He figures it was always going to end this way. He figures he knew since junior year when he stood at his car looking back at the Byers’ house with its terrifying flickering lights and its monsters and thought: I can’t leave them alone, I have to help.

_I was thinking about the first time you talked about Max like you were proud to be her brother. After she won the science fair and you puffed on your cigarette and said that of course she beat all those boys because she’s like a genius or something. I’m thinking about how you took her and Lucas out for floats and she rolled her eyes but she looked so happy that you were acting like a good brother. I couldn’t believe it. I was thinking about how that was when I thought I might fall in love with you._

Steve starts singing to himself, tapping the button with his twitching finger. He’s singing Electric Light Orchestra. It was playing in his car the first time he kissed Billy.

“I get a strange magic…”

_I was probably thinking about how you went from ranting about the Pacers, all cocky and pissed, to this shy lover the first time I kissed you. “Strange Magic” was playing. That’s how I felt about it. It felt like magic. You looked like you were gonna break apart. You tried to cover, act like it was no big deal, but you kept dropping your cigarettes and I tried not to laugh._

“Oh what a strange magic… Okay. I’m ready.” He closes his eyes and thinks of Billy’s arms around him.

_I know I was thinking about your arms around me in bed, your lips and tongue. Your happy whispers when you said all the things you could only say like that when it was just the two of us alone right after… I love you. I died loving you. Take it with you. Don’t let it ever hold you back but don’t ever forget it. I love you always, Billy Hargrove._

“HEY, ASSHOLE!”

Everything is dark and everything hurts. Steve groans. Or he thinks he does. He’s sure trying to.

“YEAH, I SEE YOU WAKING UP, YOU DICK!”

“Billy!”

“Shut up, Max. He knows what he did!” Billy’s voice cracks. He makes some kind of sniffing honking noise like a stuffed up elephant. “Goddamn…”

“He tried to save everybody.” That’s Dustin. He sounds really hoarse. Steve hears all the kids start talking all at once about Kali’s gang showing up and lab kids and-

Steve groans again. “Mmm….Billy…”

Steve hears something like a strangled sob, Billy he thinks, and Max is saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay, Billy. He’s alive, right? It’s alright now.”

Billy mumbles, “Fuckin’…” That elephant noise again.

Steve attempts to open his eyes but the lights seem impossibly bright.

Lucas is saying, “C’mon guys, we’ll come back. Let’s leave em’ for a minute…”  
“Yeah, c’mon…” That’s Max.”

A familiar calloused finger is stroking Steve’s cheek.

I’m dead, Steve thought. Or he was supposed to be.

Steve manages to open his eyes and make sense of the world. Billy is looming over him, looking like a human disaster. His hair is a mess, he’s got a couple of big bandages stuck to his temple and his jaw. He looks like he’s been sobbing for hours, like a wrung out rag. He’s waving the letter around.

“You-you just!” Billy stutters. “You! I! Fuck!” He plops down in an orange chair and sinks his head in his hands. “Jesus Christ, you’re alive. Fuck. I hate you.”

Steve reflexively blurts a laugh at that and it hurts like hell and brings on a coughing fit. His ribs. Christ.

Billy pops up again. “Be careful! God. You gotta get better. I’m going to kill you.”

“I love you too,” Steve mumbles, smiling a little.

“I know,” Billy murmurs, waving the letter again. “I mean I knew you did, but I didn’t know you… I mean I thought… You know what I mean.”

“That’s why I had to write it,” Steve rasps. He coughs again and clears his throat. “Should’ve given it to ya either way. So you’d know. How much I love you.”

Billy presses his wrists to his eyes and takes a breath. “Do you know how much I love  _you_?” His voice is so thick, like he’s talking around a rock in his throat.

“Mmmm….” Steve smiles, pretends to think. “A lot?”

Billy snorts at that. “Fuck you.”

“A lot a lot?”

“Yeah sure, that covers it,” Billy mumbles, sniffing. Steve doesn’t press. He knows how much. It’s so much that it overwhelms Steve sometimes in the best way. He didn’t know anyone could love him that much. “Listen, asshole,” Billy says. “I die first!” 

“Billy!”

BIlly grabs his hand. “No, just shut up. I’m not saying I want to die. There was a time when I really didn’t give a shit either way but I do now, okay? I’m just saying whatever happens, I get to die first. Then you do whatever you want. Even if we’re like a hundred years old. Deal?”

Steve sighs and hopes they will be a hundred. “Fine. Deal.”

“Okay.” Billy nods, looks weirdly appeased by that silly promise and Steve doesn’t want to think about it now that they’re both alive. Billy grabs Steve’s banged up hand and kisses his knuckles. “Thanks, baby.”

“Well, you should’ve said something before,” Steve says lightly. “Wouldn’t be in this bed.”

“I really hate you.”

“I know. I think it about it all the time. Now are you gonna kiss me or what? I almost  _died_  for Christ’s sake.”

Billy shakes his head, chuckling now, and kisses Steve and kisses him again and doesn’t stop until Dustin’s pounding on the hospital room door.


End file.
